Harvard report: China may surpass the United States in six fields such as quantum information science

On December 7, the Belford Center for science and international affairs of Harvard University released a report entitled "great scientific and technological competition: China vs. the United States", emphasizing the great progress China has made in many cutting-edge technology fields in the past 20 years

At the beginning of the report, Time magazine asserted in 2000 that "China cannot develop into an industrial giant in the 21st century. Its population is too large and its GDP is too small. Because the per capita income is roughly the same as that of Guyana and the Philippines, most Chinese people do not have enough money to buy advanced technological products, let alone the resources to invent these products."

By 2010, this situation began to change. China has grown into a low-cost manufacturing base for multinational corporations and is becoming a manufacturing project for commodities in the world mass market. However, the dominant school of thought in the United States at that time believed that "China is to a large extent a country bound by rules and rote memorization", which can only imitate but not innovate.

Today, China's rapid rise challenges the dominant position of the United States in the commanding heights of technology and has attracted the attention of the United States. Science and technology competition is the "main stage of competition and confrontation with China" emphasized by bill burns, director of the US Central Intelligence Agency. The report emphasizes that China has replaced the United States as the world's top high-tech manufacturer, producing 250 million computers, 25 million cars and 1.5 billion smartphones in 2020.

In addition to becoming a manufacturing power, China has become an important competitor in the field of basic technology in the 21st century: artificial intelligence (AI), 5g, Quantum Information Science (QIS), semiconductors, biotechnology and green energy. In some competitions, China has become the first. In other competitions, according to the current track, China will surpass the United States in the next decade.

Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, said: "many Americans' views on China are still outdated. Unless these trends are reversed, in the 1930s, we will compete with a country with a larger economy, more R & D investment, higher research level, wider deployment of new technologies and stronger computing infrastructure."

Comparison of R & D investment between China and the United States

In order to assess the current situation of science and technology competition between the two countries, the report examines the progress made by the United States and China in each key technology in the past 20 years. The summary is as follows:
● artificial intelligence, an advanced technology that may have the greatest impact on economy and security in the next decade, is now "an all-round competitor" in Schmidt's words.
● in the 5g field, according to the defense Innovation Committee of the Pentagon, China is expected to repeat what happened in the 4G field in the United States in the 5g field. Although the United States has advantages in 5g standard and chip design, its 5g infrastructure promotion lags behind China for many years, which gives China a first mover advantage in developing the platform in the 5g era.
● in the field of quantum information science, the United States has always been regarded as a leader, but China's national promotion has brought obvious challenges. China has surpassed the United States in quantum communication and rapidly narrowed the leading edge of the United States in quantum computing.
● the leading position of the United States in the semiconductor industry has been maintained for nearly half a century. But China's decades of efforts to become a semiconductor power and make it a strong competitor may soon catch up in two key areas: semiconductor manufacturing and chip design.
● the United States has seven of the top ten most valuable life science companies, but China is highly competitive in the whole field of Biotechnology R & D. Chinese researchers narrowed the leading edge of the United States in CRISPR gene editing technology and surpassed the United States in car-t cell therapy.
● although the United States has been the main inventor of new green energy technologies in the past two decades, today China is the world's leading manufacturer, user and exporter of these technologies, consolidating its monopoly on the future green energy supply chain. Therefore, the green action of the United States may deepen its dependence on China.
● China's "focus on big things" approach is challenging the traditional advantages of the United States in terms of macro drivers of technology competition, including its technical talent channels, R & D ecosystem and national policies. As Tarun Chhabra, senior director of technology and national security affairs of the National Security Council, acknowledged, "the United States is no longer the global technology (S & T) overlord."

REPORT:https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/GreatTechRivalry_ChinavsUS_211207.pdf